The Samarian Gorge

 

There was no relaxing today.

We started with a 5:15am wake-up, to catch the 6:15am bus to the Samarian Gorge.  The Samarian Gorge is Europe's longest gorge at 13km, and an elevation drop of ~1200m (for just the hiking path).  It took us about 1.25 hours on a winding road...a VERY winding road...to get to the top of the hiking path. The picture you see above is what we were starting to brave at 7:45am...after resting for a while to ensure I didn't barf up my gross "chocolate donut" breakfast.  Donuts, and bread in general, are not something I would say that Greece excels at.

The hike was tough.  The ground was very uneven, very steep in sections (a couple years ago 2 people died from falling rocks overhead), and it was very hot (29 degrees in the shade).  Every day about 1000 people do the 13km hike, and a few people do the hike UP the Gorge (we passed a couple dozen or so).  On our tour bus 3 people didn't make it, and turned around near the beginning, as the first 4km are the hardest.

At the narrowest point, the Gorge gets to be about 3m across, although that is near the end of the hike.  The sides, as in the picture above, are about 300m high.

After the hike we stopped in the little town at the bottom of the Gorge and enjoyed a few hours on a beautiful beach with smooth black pebbles/sand, on the Libyan sea.  At 5:30 we caught a ferry over to Sougia, where our bus picked us up and had us back to Chania around 8:00pm.  We quickly had dinner, ice cream, finished Bridge to Terabithia, and went to bed, tired and ready to sleep.